Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Coupons - The Winning Formula

This morning in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader I read that only 6% of coupons are used by consumers.

I don’t know but I bet that the companies who put out these coupons have to allow enough of a profit margin to pay 100% of the coupon redeemers, not just the 6%.

Naturally, based on statistics the companies know that only 6% will use their coupons which will make their profit margin even wider than they can officially foresee. Which such an unexpected profit margin, I’m sure the CEOs get big annual bonuses for raking in the profits.

And not only that but some grocery stores, such as Krogers most the time, double their coupons, and that means they have to allow a profit margin as if 100% of their customers will use the coupons, and then they only have to pay out to the 6% coupon users, they win too.

Everybody Wins! Except the 94% of consumers that don’t use coupons, they are paying for it.

6 Comments:

Eddie, if you'll notice their everyday, non-sale pricing, Kroger's and other stores taht double their coupons charge more for things on a regular basis. Kroger is very expensive around here, in relation to the other big stores, so double-coupons don't mean much if you shop there a lot.

I always cut coupons out (for things we already use and some new products) and then sometimes I forget and leave them at home. About half of all I cut out will expire before I get to use them, but I have saved as much as $18 per trip!

Thanks for the kind words at my blog. I don't put heart and soul into the posts everyday, but probably 5 out of 7, I do.

Judy,Today I shopped at Krogers and Publix. On some items Pubix was the cheapest and some Krogers was the cheapest. They both give 5% senior discount on Wednesdays, so I go to both.5 of 7 is still a high percentage, good for you.

Ed,My first job was a checker at the local grocery store. I remember one thing the manager yelled at us in a meeting was that he'd better not catch us checkers taking cash for coupons out of our drawer, as if a customer had presented it. That was back in the day before technology like scanning would prevent something like that. I remember thinking, "how odd..who would do that?" The next week or two, I saw exactly who would do that...the manager of the store was having his ass't manager go through stacks of coupons, cutting them out with plans to present them for reimbursement from the company that issued the coupon...funny the ones who are most suspicious are often the most guilty.